Harman always believed the jet had crashed somewhere in the Indian Ocean, and Monday’s announcement confirmed his theory. “Now it’s all the question of finding out what happened in the cockpit,” he said.

That will depend on whether search teams can find the black box, or the flight information recorder, which would contain data about what happened to the plane before it crashed.

Investigators are considering a range of possible causes including terrorism, sabotage, catastrophic mechanical failure or issues related to the mental health of the pilots or someone else on board.

Regardless of what the cause is found to be or if it is ever even determined, Harman said regulatory agencies will almost certainly make some changes in response to the crash.

“They would have to,” he said. “You’ve got to engender confidence in people who feel anxious about flying.”

He believes it will be some kind of real-time, continuous monitoring of the aircraft’s movement and its systems and some type of audio or visual monitoring of the pilots in the cockpit.

These feeds could then be called up in the event of a crash to determine what happened when and where and to get people answers faster.

Haynes said his experience has mostly come from analyzing smaller plane crashes, but he has not seen any indication that the Boeing 777 suffered a major malfunction that caused the crash.

“I really can’t see a scenario for that in this,” he said.

The plane continued flying for hours after last communication, making many turns off its intended flight path; no distress signals were sent; and there were no signs of a major explosion, Haynes said.

“It wasn’t like the plane went out of control or broke up in mid-air,” he said.

It appears intentional, he said.

The reason, though, for crashing a plane and killing all 239 people aboard, may never be understood.

Haynes said unless some documentation is found, there is no way to go inside the mind of whoever is responsible because they were likely one of the victims of the crash.

“ ‘Why’ is something I don’t think we will ever know,” he said.

Bob Reid, retired Air Force navigator, flew almost 6,000 hours in cargo planes mostly over the open ocean

Reid is not convinced the plane actually crashed.

He believes it was hijacked and is stowed away on land somewhere, despite what officials said on Monday.

“You don’t fly for five hours off course on a suicide mission,” he said.

If the plane had crashed, some kind of wreckage would have been recovered by now, he said.

Officials had not confirmed late Monday that objects spotted floating in the ocean were debris from the plane.

Reid said people want closure and officials feel pressured to provide an answer, even if they don’t have all the information.

“I think somebody knows where it is, but they just haven’t released the information yet, which is unfortunate,” he said. “Until pieces of the plane are found, I haven’t seen anything to change my mind.”